Osho Quotes on Arrogance

Osho Quotes on Arrogance

1. Wealth can fill you with arrogance, and so can renunciation. So arrogance is the only obstruction.
2. When you worship or pray it is all a display of your egotism and arrogance. It is a decoration for your ego. Real prayer is when you are not, when the worshipper is no more, worship starts.
3. All your arrogance is violence. Ego is the thread of violence. The one who knows is not even aware of his being; he does not know who he is, he is lost. The ignorant remains arrogant and proclaims, “I am.” He who is enlightened stops this language.
4. Nanak says that none of the methods and tricks devised to be free of samsara have any strength in them either. The authentic power lies in the hands of Him who creates the world and, having created, admires it. It is all in His hands. All strength, all power lies in His hands. Become weak, helpless, you will get His support. If you are strong you need no support. God is the strength of the weak and helpless. If you become helpless here, God awaits you there; but He belongs to the weak, not to the strong. The strong man does not need Him; he believes in helping himself. He denies God from all his endeavors, his arrogance is still strong. He does not feel the need of God’s help.
5. One has to learn humbleness because that is reality. We are interdependent, so how can we be arrogant? You cannot live without the air, you cannot live without fire, you cannot live without the sun, you cannot live without the trees, you cannot live without the woman, woman without the man — you cannot live at all independently. So all arrogance is just ignorance. We are interdependent, we interpenetrate each other, and everything is required.
6. Gautam Buddha used to say, “You should be like a house which has light inside. When the house, its doors, its windows, are showing light, thieves don’t come close. But when the house is dark and there is no light, it is an opportunity for thieves.” And by thieves he means all that destroys your beauty, your grandeur, all that takes away your treasures. Arrogance, ego, aggressiveness, superiority, the idea of being special — all are destroying you and your peace; they are destroying your nobodiness.
7. The humble man is just the proud man standing upside down. Humbleness is a form of arrogance, upside down, in the reverse order, in the reverse gear — but it is the same car. The car has not changed. First you want to prove to the world that “I am somebody.” Then one day you start proving that “I am nobody.” But you are still proving, you still continue proving that “I am nobody.” But the idea that “I am nobody — humble, dust of your feet” is still a claim, and there is some ego hiding behind it. The humblest person carries the most subtle ego. Watch the so-called humble people — people who think they are humble — and you will see a very very subtle ego hiding behind their facade.
8. Once you have looked in, once you have come down from the head, once you have left the arrogance of the head and become humble in the heart, a new world opens its doors to you.
9. We are so violent that no one allows anyone to remain himself. Everyone is after everyone, everyone is trying to convert everyone to his own way — without knowing that he may be just destroying a very great possibility. Insist on being yourself. There is no arrogance in it. This is a simple law that “I must be allowed to be myself.”
10. God is grace, God is gentleness, God is feminine; and the more graceful you become, the more soft, tender and gentle, the more you become available to God. We are not expected to fight with existence; on the contrary we have to relax with existence. It is not a question of conquering nature, but on the contrary, of being conquered by nature, of being so utterly part of it that one disappears as a separate unit. Gentleness prepares the way so that one day you can dissolve all your arrogance; and the center of arrogance is the ego. If arrogance is dropped, the ego disappears, and what is left, that is gentleness. One cannot cultivate gentleness; one can only understand the cunning ways of the ego. In that very understanding the ego disappears and what remains is gentleness. Gentleness is our nature; the ego is hiding it, surrounding it. Only the rock of the ego has to be removed and then suddenly the spring starts flowing.
11. The man of real understanding is neither arrogant nor humble. He simply is not, he only states the fact. It can hurt you, but that is your responsibility, that is your problem. He does not want to hurt you, ke has no desire to hurt anybody but his statements can hurt. And when they hurt, you will think they are being made in arrogance, in anger. They are not made in any anger or arrogance; be is simply stating a fact, as it is.
12. Lao Tzu then goes on to say that the saint is humble, like muddy waters. Humility, humbleness, is of two kinds There is one humility which is only an ornament of the ego. If we wish to symbolise it we may say, “As pure as the waters of the Ganges.” Purity has a sense of arrogance, and so has humility. Such a humble man declares his humility everywhere. He goes on falling at the feet of others and declares himself to be less than the dust under their feet. But look into his eyes, observe his demeanour, and you will find him the opposite of his claim to being nothing. If you tell him a more humble person than him, he shall feel more hurt than an arrogant man at the thought of being second place. Can humility be graded thus? If humility can be graded higher or lower, then where is humility? The ego seeks the peaks. Therefore he who is conscious of his ego, is not humble; he is an egoist. Humility cannot be felt without the feeling of arrogance within. Hence, he who proclaims his humility is an egotist. Otherwise he would never get the feeling of humility. There is no way to feel humility. But ego can put on the disguise of humility. It does. We initiate our children into it.
13. The meaning of a good deed is something very different. A virtuous deed is a deed which does not give rise to arrogance. That act which gives rise to arrogance and conceit is a sin. Therefore, it can be safely said that God has never committed a sin because there is no sign of conceit in any of His actions. To date, He has not once proclaimed that ‘I am’. Therefore, all that He does is virtuous.
14. Lao Tzu also says: “When your task is duly fulfilled make haste to withdraw into obscurity and thus give no chance for your arrogance to crystallize.” Let no one know that you were the doer. When Lao Tzu’s fame spread far and wide and people trekked hundreds of miles to come and meet him, Lao Tzu quietly slipped away one day and was no longer heard of. He withdrew into obscurity. He, disappeared from view completely. It was never known when Lao Tzu died or how he died! All that is known is that one fine day he disappeared. This same advice he gives to others: when your labour is crowned with success, step silently into oblivion.
15. The doer must withdraw into obscurity as soon as his work is done so that arrogance has no chance to arise. Otherwise success leads to great failure. There is no hell greater than the hell of success. Our own success becomes poisonous for us. We weave a web of our own entanglements in much the same way as a spider. Then we bewail our lot and struggle to find ways and means to get out of our self-inflicted imprisonment. This prison is of our own making, but it happens in such a way that we become aware of it only when it is already done.
16. Try out this experiment. Become ordinary for twenty-four hours. Let only one thought be within you for those twenty-four hours that I am an ordinary person. I am nothing. After these twenty-four hours you will never want to be extraordinary again. The glimpse of bliss that you will get in this ordinariness would be one beyond your imagination. This glimpse is always available to us but we are so stiff with our arrogance of being extraordinary, special! How can we experience this flash of joy when we sit with all the doors and windows closed? Get down from your throne. The mystery of life cannot be unfolded on the gilded throne of the ego. What is attained on the ordinary rough and dusty path of humility can never be attained on the gilded peaks of the ego.
17. Truth is truth. It is neither arrogant nor humble. It has to be declared as it is. It can appear humble to you if you understand; it will appear arrogant to you if you don’t understand. And if you don’t understand, then there is no need to go to such statements which apparently look arrogant. People who don’t understand or don’t want to understand can find arrogance anywhere.
18. My statements are neither arrogant nor humble, because they can’t be arrogant and they can’t be humble. Ordinarily you think humbleness is opposite to arrogance. It is not. Humbleness and arrogance are both the same. They are like hot and cold — degrees of the same energy. The humble person has as much ego as the arrogant person. The arrogant person claims the ego, the humble person denies the ego — but the ego is there. The arrogant person says, “I am special,” and the humble person says, “I am nobody, sir — just the dust underneath your feet.” One is claiming, the other IS ALSO claiming in a different way. When you really see your nature, ego disappears, and with ego disappear arrogance and humbleness — BOTH disappear. Jesus is neither humble nor arrogant. Buddha is neither humble nor arrogant. They simply state the fact. Now, it depends on you how you interpret it.
19. The humble person is a very rare phenomenon in the world. And whenever he is there in the world, nobody understands him because he is not humble in the ordinary sense, as the so-called humble people are. He is not arrogant — arrogance and humbleness have both disappeared from his life. He simply lives as a nobody. He becomes incomprehensible. Jesus is incomprehensible. The incomprehensibility is that we cannot categorise him either as an egoist or as humble. Sometimes he looks very humble and sometimes he looks very arrogant; it depends on the situation.
20. In India we have the same word for death and for ultimate meditation — SAMADHI. Samadhi has two meanings: death and the ultimate attainment of super-consciousness. Very significant, indicates two aspects of that ultimate silence. On one hand you die — as you have always been you will never be again. That old man simply evaporates.It is not modified, it is not continuous in any way. It has nothing to do with the new consciousness that arises in you. The new is ABSOLUTELY new. So on one hand you die, on the other hand a new kind of life, the life of egolessness, starts. That is not the life of humility, remember. Egolessness has nothing to do with humility or humbleness. Humbleness, humility, are again the ways of the same ego, subtle ways. A REALLY egoless man is neither arrogant nor humble. If you find somebody humble, then he is just standing upside down; it is the same ego doing SHIRSHASAN — headstand. Arrogance can become humbleness. But when the ego disappears, it simply disappears leaving no trace behind — not even of humbleness. Hence the fear. One trembles to take the jump. It is committing suicide.
21. Ego can pretend to be humble. Self-effacing men are not really humble, self-effacing men are simply very tricky and cunning. No, it appears to people who cannot move into the profundities of the wise man that he is self-effacing. He does not know the self, how can he be self-effacing? He simply lives without any ego, without any arrogance and without any humility.
22. If you will see what miracles are happening around you, within you, you will respect yourself too, you will love yourself too. If the whole existence loves you, you will love yourself. And that is the only romance that knows no divorce. But it is not arrogant, it is not egoistic. That has to be remembered, because ego is a closing factor. Arrogance divides you from existence. To be nobody is the greatest achievement in the world.
23. To be the last means: no desire for being first. That is the meaning. To be the last means: all comparison has been dropped, all competition has been dropped, all aggression, arrogance has been dropped. One starts enjoying this moment — the peace, the bliss of it, the benediction of it. One is in sheer delight because one can breathe, because one can see the flowers, because one can watch the birds, one can listen to the song of the birds or the rain falling on the roof, or the smell of the wet earth — small things.
24. Our whole educational system is competitive, and our whole society is based on that competitive system. You have to be successful, and competition is the way. Unless you are successful, the society condemns you as a nobody, good for nothing. This competitiveness enters into our very bloodstream, so we become absolutely unaware of its always being there. Even in the name of searching for truth, there is competitiveness: who finds it first, who becomes the pioneer, the founder, the discoverer. Even in a field like humbleness — which one would think is outside the area of competitiveness — even there you will find the same spirit, the same competitive egoistic arrogance; then you are competing to be more humble than anybody else.
25. Whatever you have been doing, you can do far better if you drop competitiveness and arrogance; because all the energy that is involved in these will be released, will become available to you for rebelliousness.
26. Simplicity is a state of effortlessness;it is humbleness — not the humbleness created against arrogance, not humbleness created against the ego, not humbleness opposite to the proud mind. No, humbleness is not opposite to pride. Humbleness is simply absence of pride. Try to see the point. If your humbleness is against your pride, if you have strived to drop your pride, your ego, your arrogance, then what you have done is only repression. Now you will become proud about your humbleness; now you will start bragging, how humble you are. This is what happens. Just see the so-called humble people — they are constantly broadcasting that they are humble. The really humble people will not know that they are humble; how can they then brag about it? How can the humble person know that he is humble? The humble person is a person no more. The humble person is in a state of fana: the humble person has dissolved. Now he is only a presence. Humbleness is a presence, not a characteristic of personality, not a trait, but just a presence. Others will feel it, but you will not be able to feel it yourself. So is the case with simplicity. Simplicity simply means living moment to moment spontaneously, not according to some philosophy, not according to Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, not according to any philosophy. Whenever you live according to a philosophy you have betrayed yourself, you are an enemy to yourself. Simplicity means to be in a deep friendship with oneself, to live your life with no idea interfering.
27. The mind is very arrogant: without knowing a thing, it starts proving, this way or that way. There are arrogant atheists who try to prove that there is no God, and there are arrogant theists who try to prove that there is God. Proving or disproving, it is the same mind and the same arrogance. Neither is the theist religious nor the atheist. The religious person is one who is not arrogant. The religious person is one who is not trying to prove for or against, who is not trying to come to some conclusions through reasoning; one who is available, open, ready to see. Unclouded are his eyes — unclouded because he has no ideas, no ready-made formulas; unclouded because he has no already arrived at conclusions; unclouded because he has no a priori approach; unclouded because he is innocent, childlike, ready to see but with no prejudice, with no ideology. The religious person is never a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Parsee. A religious person is simply a vulnerable consciousness, an open heart. The religious person is a quest, an enquiry — and enquiry cannot begin with already arrived at conclusions.
28. A prisoner cannot be a lover. Only freedom knows the fragrance of love. Only freedom knows your immense worthiness. And that does not give you any ego, any arrogance. It makes you really more humble than ever — you don’t deserve it; still existence out of its abundance has given you so much. You learn for the first time the sense of gratitude, gratefulness.
29. Husbands, particularly, have lived in this country with the idea that the woman is a slave and they are the masters. Their arrogance and egoism are such that they have been telling women, “Your god is your husband; there is no other god for you.” Millions of women had to be ready to be burned with their dead husbands, because the husband was suspicious that after he has died, his woman may fall in love with somebody else. He wanted to dominate her even when he is dead, and the only way was that the wife also commits suicide.
30. Have you ever watched? When you are talking to your boss, you are all smiles; your every breath says, ‘Yes, sir.’ Even though you are offended, angry, you are ready to kiss his feet. And when you are talking to your servant, have you seen the arrogance on your face? You have never smiled. How can you smile talking to your servant? It is impossible. You have to dehumanize him. How can you smile and relate to him as a human being? You have to possess him as a thing: he is a slave. You have to behave in a different way than you behave with your boss. There, you are a servant; he remains arrogant, he remains bossy. When you are talking to a friend you have a different mask to use. When you are talking to a stranger, of course, a different mask is needed. You have to use many masks, and you have many faces, and you go on changing them as circumstances change. Your personality consists only of false faces. And what is essence? Essence is your original face, without any masks. Essence is that which you brought into the world when you were born. Essence is that which was with you in the womb. Essence is that which has been given to you by God — or whatsoever you call totality, the whole, existence. Essence is a gift from existence to you. Personality is a gift of the society, parents, school, college, culture, civilization. Personality is not you, it is pseudo.
31. A blissful person is a very rebellious person, he is pure rebellion. A blissful person is so independent that he needs nobody, that he can be alone, that he does not depend on anybody; and that seems to be arrogance to the society. The society does not like blissful people, it likes miserable people. The society patronises misery in every way, and if one wants to be patronised by the society, one has to remain miserable; that is the pay-off of misery. Otherwise it is a simple phenomenon to be blissful, very simple. Just don’t impose any ideals on yourself, no ideals; don’t try to pretend that which you are not. Then bliss starts showering.
32. We have to go into reality by dropping all expectations, all ideologies. Ideologies are like garments, and truth has to be faced in utter nudity. We cannot go to truth hiding behind theology, philosophy, so many words, systems of thought. We have to encounter truth without any prejudice — and Christianity is a prejudice, Hinduism is a prejudice, any ‘ism’ is a prejudice. It means we have already decided what truth is. Without knowing, we have decided; this is arrogance. Without knowing, we have decided; that means we have fallen victim to mass hypnosis. Without knowing we have decided; it means we are not really enquiring after truth, hence we have settled for cheap beliefs. All beliefs are cheap. We can get beliefs just by being born in a particular home. If you had been born in a Hindu home, you would have been a Hindu; if you had been brought up by a Mohammedan you would have been a Mohammedan. This is just conditioning by the parents and the society. The real seeker of truth has to renounce all conditioning; he has to come to a moment of unconditioning, of utter silence, purity. In that silence, truth descends.